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Part 1 Chapter 1

Word Count: 2019    |    Released on: 18/11/2017

k, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with t

; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the s

ed conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extract

awn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio

of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in

iency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week t

us, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new orde

story have inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, and not Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting, however, that the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the name of his kingdom and country to mak

e one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady! There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-

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Contents

Part 1 The Author's Preface Part 1 Chapter 1 Part 1 Chapter 2 Part 1 Chapter 3 Part 1 Chapter 4 Part 1 Chapter 5 Part 1 Chapter 6 Part 1 Chapter 7 Part 1 Chapter 8 Part 1 Chapter 9 Part 1 Chapter 10
Part 1 Chapter 11
Part 1 Chapter 12
Part 1 Chapter 13
Part 1 Chapter 14
Part 1 Chapter 15
Part 1 Chapter 16
Part 1 Chapter 17
Part 1 Chapter 18
Part 1 Chapter 19
Part 1 Chapter 20
Part 1 Chapter 21
Part 1 Chapter 22
Part 1 Chapter 23
Part 1 Chapter 24
Part 1 Chapter 25
Part 1 Chapter 26
Part 1 Chapter 27
Part 1 Chapter 28
Part 1 Chapter 29
Part 1 Chapter 30
Part 1 Chapter 31
Part 1 Chapter 32
Part 1 Chapter 33
Part 1 Chapter 34
Part 1 Chapter 35
Part 1 Chapter 36
Part 1 Chapter 37
Part 1 Chapter 38
Part 1 Chapter 39
Part 1 Chapter 40
Part 1 Chapter 41
Part 1 Chapter 42
Part 1 Chapter 43
Part 1 Chapter 44
Part 1 Chapter 45
Part 1 Chapter 46
Part 1 Chapter 47
Part 1 Chapter 48
Part 1 Chapter 49
Part 1 Chapter 50
Part 1 Chapter 51
Part 1 Chapter 52
Part 2 The Author's Preface
Part 2 Chapter 1
Part 2 Chapter 2
Part 2 Chapter 3
Part 2 Chapter 4
Part 2 Chapter 5
Part 2 Chapter 6
Part 2 Chapter 7
Part 2 Chapter 8
Part 2 Chapter 9
Part 2 Chapter 10
Part 2 Chapter 11
Part 2 Chapter 12
Part 2 Chapter 13
Part 2 Chapter 14
Part 2 Chapter 15
Part 2 Chapter 16
Part 2 Chapter 17
Part 2 Chapter 18
Part 2 Chapter 19
Part 2 Chapter 20
Part 2 Chapter 21
Part 2 Chapter 22
Part 2 Chapter 23
Part 2 Chapter 24
Part 2 Chapter 25
Part 2 Chapter 26
Part 2 Chapter 27
Part 2 Chapter 28
Part 2 Chapter 29
Part 2 Chapter 30
Part 2 Chapter 31
Part 2 Chapter 32
Part 2 Chapter 33
Part 2 Chapter 34
Part 2 Chapter 35
Part 2 Chapter 36
Part 2 Chapter 37
Part 2 Chapter 38
Part 2 Chapter 39
Part 2 Chapter 40
Part 2 Chapter 41
Part 2 Chapter 42
Part 2 Chapter 43
Part 2 Chapter 44
Part 2 Chapter 45
Part 2 Chapter 46
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